Reason, Faith and Homosexual Acts

by John Finnis
Oxford University and University of Notre Dame

Discusses Catholic teaching about homosexuality. Explains the philosophical rationale

for that teaching. Argues that homosexual activity is wrong, along with all other non-
marital sexual activity, because it undermines the goods of marriage.

What the Church Teaches about Homosexual Inclinations

The Church refuses to consider the person as a heterosexual or a

homosexual and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the
creature of God and, by grace, his child and heir to eternal life. Each person
also has a sexual identity: either male or female, man or woman. The Church
does not use the term sexual identity as some people do, who claim that people
have sexual identities as homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, and so forth.
Instead, the Church teaches that each male should accept his sexual identity as
a man, and each female her sexual identity as a woman; and that means
accepting that one is different from and complementary to and equal in dignity
with persons of the opposite sex (gender).
The Church has sometimes spoken of homosexual persons. Anyone
who has a more or less strong tendency towards sexual activity with a person
or persons of the same sex can be so described. Of course, as is well known, most
such persons are also heterosexual persons. That is to say, most people who
engage, or have an inclination to engage, in homosexual activity also engage, or
are more or less inclined to engage, in sexual activity with a person or persons
of the opposite sex. Very many homosexual personspersons with homosexual
inclinationsmarry and have children by their spouse. Not all do, and there are
some, relatively quite few, who have a sexual urge but lack the psychophysical
capacity for marital intercourse.
The Church observes that in some homosexual persons the homosexual
inclination (orientation) comes, it seems, from a false education, from a lack of
normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other
similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable. But the Church also
observes that the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual
tendencies is not negligible, and that some homosexual persons may be

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definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological
constitution judged to be incurable. Acknowledging the last-mentioned class
of persons, the Church is well aware of people who conclude that their
tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within
a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, insofar as such
homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
But the Church, today as always, rejects that way of arguing from
nature. The Christian teaching from the outset has been that no homosexual
acts are ever justified, even the acts of someone whose inclination to engage in
them is innate (that is, present at birth) and, in one sense of the word,
natural. Accordingly, the Churchs Catechism reaffirms that every such
inclination, whether innate or pathological, incurable or curable, permanent or
transitory, is an objective disorder, an intrinsically disordered inclination.
The reason why even the most deep-seated homosexual tendency must
be called disordered is straightforward. Every such tendency, inclination or
orientation is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral
evil. Of course, the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin
for a sin is committed only in a choice. But the inclination is precisely an
inclination to choose a homosexual acta sex act with a person of the same sex.
And, like every other kind of non-marital sex act, any and every homosexual act
is a seriously disordered kind of activity which, if freely and deliberately chosen,
is a serious sin. An inclination which one cannot choose to pursue without
serious moral evil is obviously a disordered inclination. So: the particular
inclination of the homosexual person...is a more or less strong tendency ordered
[i.e., directed] toward an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must
be seen as an objective disorder. The definitive edition of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church first points out that homosexual acts are always intrinsically
disordered (para. 2357) and then goes on, in the following paragraph, to
describe the inclination in precisely the same terms: intrinsically disordered.

Why the Churchs Teaching about Homosexual Acts

and Inclinations is Right

The Churchs teaching about homosexual inclinations is proposed with

ample awareness of modern psychological and biological research into the
origins of these inclinations. But it does not rely on the judgment of those
researchers who are convinced that homosexuality is a psychiatric disorder.
Nor is it contradicted or challenged or unsettled by the opinion of those who
hold that it is not a psychiatric disorder. The Churchs teaching about these
inclinations rests instead on the Catholic doctrine about the choice to engage in
homosexual acts. This is a moral doctrine, a teaching about what is right (or
wrong), good (or worthless and harmful), and choice worthy (or sinful).
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 From its earliest years, the Church has understood its moral doctrine as
not only a matter of faith but also fully in line with human nature. St Paul
teaches clearly about this in his letter to the Romans (Rom. 2: 14-15). But Jesus
has already made the point by his profound teachings on human sexual identity
(Matt. 19: 4), and on the marital communion of man and woman which, on the
basis of that complementarity of identities, was established from the beginning
(i.e., in the intentions of God the creator of nature) (Rom. 19: 8). As Jesus makes
clear, this natural communion requires for its integrity not only the sexual
intercourse of the spouses (Matt. 19: 5), but also the complete and unwavering
mastery and overcomingby everyone, married or unmarriedof every desire
for sexual contact or enjoyment outside marriage (Matt. 5: 27). To look on
anyone with lust is adultery, that is, an offenseeven by the unmarried
against marriage, a relationship both profoundly natural and sustainable only by
moral aspiration. I shall show, below, why this must be so.
Some of the greatest theologians and philosophers have explained the
relationship between human nature, the natural world as a whole, and the truths
of morality. Morality concerns not what simply is or is deep-seated or usual, but
rather the good, and the various kinds of good (goods), which should be sought,
chosen, and done. Everything that should be, and is choice worthy, is natural and
grounded in the givens of human nature. But not everything we find in our
nature is a pointer to what is good, choice worthy and reasonable. For example,
as St Thomas Aquinas, the master theorist of natural law morality, points out,
we all have a natural inclination to follow our bodily feelings and desires even
against the good of being reasonable. This is one of many natural i.e.,
innate, deep-seated, typicalinclinations which should not simply be followed!
Others are found more in some peoples nature than in others: some
people are more inclined to anger, including immoral anger, than others; some
are more inclined to greed, some to crippling fear, and so forth. So, as Pope John
Paul II teaches, natural inclinations take on moral relevance only insofar as they
refer to the human person and the persons authentic fulfillment... Aquinas,
following a lead from Aristotles research and reflections, reminds his readers
that homosexual inclinationse.g. the desire of some men to have sex with
other menarise in some cases from pleasure-seeking which has initiated and
sustained a corrupt taste for this sort of behavior, a bad habit, but in other cases
from a defective psycho-physical constitution (i.e., from inclinations incipiently
present even from conception). The way these inclinations originate in a
particular person does not affect the fact that, just insofar as they incline that
person towards sex acts with persons of the same sex, they incline not towards
but away from authentic fulfillment.
Human fulfillment consists in the actualizing, in the lives of persons
and their communities, those basic human goods towards which the first

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principles of practical reasonthe very foundations of consciencedirect us.
Among these basic human goods is the good of marriage. The Church often
speaks of the goods of marriage: (1) loving friendship between wife and
husband, and (2) procreating and educating any children who may be conceived
from the spouses marital intercourse. They are interdependent goods: this is a
friendship sealed by a commitment to exclusiveness and permanence, a
commitment of a kind made appropriate by marriages orientation to the
procreation and education of the children of the husband/father and
wife/mother; and that raising of children is most appropriately undertaken as a
long-term, even lifelong commitment of the spouse-parents. Being
interdependent, these goods can also be properly described as two aspects of a
single basic human good, the good of marriage itself. In the Churchs most
explicit teaching on the foundations of its moral doctrine, in which Pope John
Paul points to the basic human goods as the first principles of the natural moral
law, this single though basic good is called: the communion of persons in
marriage.
The whole Christian teaching on sex has, from the beginning, done no
more, and no less, than point out the ways in which every kind of sex act, other
than authentic marital intercourse, is opposed to the good of marriage. The
more distant a kind of sex act is from the marital kind, the more seriously
disordered and, in itself, immoral it is.
How do non-marital sex acts oppose the good of marriage? The next
few paragraphs sketch one kind of answer to that question. It is only one of
many ways in which the question has been answered. It is suggested by one of
Aquinass central teachings about the morality of marital intercourse, an often
misunderstood but important and true teaching which the Church itself also
upholds.
In Christian marriage the personality, individuality and equality of the
spouses is fully respected. The marital communion is not a submerging of the
two persons into one. But it is a communion, a bringing-together of their wills
in their mutual commitment; of their wills and minds in shared understanding
and faith and hope; of their wills, minds and feelings in shared joys, cares, and
sadness; and of their wills, minds, feelings and bodies in sexual intercourse. That
intercourse, when it is truly marital, enables them to experience and actualize
their mutual commitment and communion at all levels of their being: biological,
emotional, rational and volitional. It is only truly marital when it has the
characteristics of the two-sided good of marriage itself: friendship and openness
to procreation. A sexual act is marital only when (1) it is an act of the generative
kind, that is, culminates in a union of the generative organs in which the wife
accepts into her genital tract her husbands genital organ and the seed he
thereby gives her; and (2) it is an act of friendship in which each is seeking to

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express commitment to and affection for, and the desire to benefit and give
marital pleasure to, and share marital pleasure with, the other spouse as the very
person to whom he or she is committed in marriage.
These two conditions are also inter-linked. Only an act of the
generative kind (in the sense just specified) truly unites the spouses at all levels,
biologically as well as at the level of feelings and intentions. This is a real
biological unity (even if, as is usually the case, the couple in fact cannot, at the
time of intercourse, bring about actual generation of new life). For in
reproduction a mating pair functions as a single organism. In respect of all other
organic functions, from thinking to digesting, each human being is an entirely
individual organism. But neither the male nor the female can reproduce; it takes
their union in an act of the generative kind to bring about reproduction (if the
background conditions of their bodies are in the state required for actual
generation). So in an act of the generative kind, whether or not it results on a
particular occasion in actual generation, there is more than merely a particular
juxtaposition of members and sequence of movements. There is also, and
fundamentally, a real (albeit in itself temporary) organic/biological uniting of
the pair, so that then and there, in respect of the reproductive function, they
constitute one organism. This is the one-flesh unity which Jesus, recalling
Genesis, makes foundational to his teaching on marriage, and on sexual desires,
choices, and actions in their relation, right or wrong, to marriage understood as
the two persons, male and female, in one flesh.
That, in short, is why in marital intercourse a married couple can
express their commitment, and can really, not merely in imagination, actualize
and experience their marriage. The conditions under which a sexual transaction
between spouses can amount to marital intercourse are, to repeat, of two kinds.
Their chosen behavior must be an act of the generative kind (taken on each
occasion as a whole sequence of preparatory, consummatory and confirmatory),
and their intentions and wills must also be united in service of the marital good
instantiated in their exclusive and permanent commitment to each other in
marriage. So a married couples sexual act is not truly marital if, for example, one
or both of the spouses is wishing he or she were doing this with someone else,
or is imagining doing so, or is willing to engage in this activity with any
attractive person who could bring him or her to orgasmic release.
Think of someone whose frame of mind is: I am willing to do this with
some other attractive person, but the only available person at present is my
spouse, so Ill do it with him/her. Such a person is disabled by that frame of
mind from making and carrying through a truly marital choice to engage in
intercourse. In the technical phrase of the theologians, this person is engaging
in intercourse for pleasure alone. His or her act of intercourse is depersonalized,
not an act of marital friendship. That is why the Church teaches that such a

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choice is always morally flawed; and in some kinds of instance it is a serious sin
against the integrity and authenticity of marriage and marital life.
The good of marriage is an intrinsic good, not a mere means to any
other end. But it is also true that the well-being of children greatly depends
upon the marital commitment of their parents. As that commitment tends to be
strengthened by marital intercourse which respects the integrity and
authenticitythe purityof their marriage, so too it is weakened at its heart by
intercourse which is not truly marital, but rather expressive of self-indulgence.
So anyone who thinks clearly, has the well-being of children at heart, and
recognizes the good of marital communion, will judge wrongful every kind of
sex act which is not truly marital.
And there is another, not unrelated, kind of reason for the very same
moral judgment. One cannot engage in truly marital intercourse if one is
willing, even conditionally willing, to engage in this sort of behavior (deliberate
sexual stimulation towards orgasm) outside marriage or in one or other of the
non-marital ways. Unless and until one reverses it by repenting of it, such a
willingness so deforms ones will that one is disabled from engaging in a free,
rational, sentient and bodily act which would really express, actualize, foster, and
enable ones spouse to experience the good of marriage and of ones own
commitment (self-giving) in marriage. Of course, one may imagine that ones
act, though performed with this divided, impure willingness, is still an
expression and experiencing of the good of marriage. But this can be no more
than an illusion, which rational reflection punctures. And a spouse who knows
or senses that the other spouse is willingeven conditionally or
hypotheticallyto do this kind of thing outside (before, during, or after)
marriage is likely to experience the act as not an expression and actualization of
marital commitment. That is why such a willingness saps marriage at its core.
So: nobody who is or wishes to be a spouse, and no one who considers
it reasonable for people to become spouses, can judge it reasonable for human
beings to seek sexual satisfaction in an extra-marital way. For approval of extra-
marital sex acts, even of other peoples acts or of the sex acts of people who could
never marry, has two implications: (1) It implies that anyone and everyone
should approve of such acts, i.e., should regard them as kinds of acts not excluded
by reasonableness; and (2) it is a form of conditional willingness to engage in
such acts. Therefore, it entails (necessarily implies) also (3) that married couples,
spouses, should approve of and be conditionally willing to perform non-marital
acts. But such a conclusion is directly opposed to the good of marriage, of the
spouses as committed friends, and of any children who may have resulted from
their marital union and be dependent upon the purity which is near the heart
of its stability and its appropriateness as the context for nurture and education.
Homosexual sex acts, even between people who could never
consummate a marriage and who wish, at the time, to be committed to each
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other in a lifelong friendship, can never be marital. To judge them morally
acceptableto condone themis opposed to the good of marriage, a basic
human good. So they cannot reasonably be judged morally acceptable.
The relationship of same-sex couples can never be marriage. The easiest
way to see this is to ask oneself why same-sex sex acts should be restricted to
couples rather than three-somes, four-somes, etc., or rather than couples or
other groups whose membership rotates at agreed intervals. Nothing in the gay
ideology can, or even seriously tries, to explain or defend the exclusiveness or
permanence of same-sex partnerships or their limitation to couples. The
practice and experience of homosexual relationships is dramatic confirmation
that, once one departs from the institution of marriage as a committed, exclusive
and permanent sexual relationship between a woman and a man, there are no
solid grounds for making ones sexual relationships even imitate real marriage.
As careful large-scale studies have shown, and anecdotal historical testimony
amply confirms, there are practically no homosexual couples, even long-term
couples, to whom sexual exclusivity as a principle, and real mutual commitment
to it in practice, make any sense.

A Final Word on Sexual Orientation

The shifty phrase sexual orientation is an important obstacle to clear thinking.

It spreads darkness over the law and popular discussions by hiding the
distinction between emotional inclinations, dispositions, or interests and actual
or conditional willingness. Willingness is, or results from, a choiceperhaps a
conditional choice (I am willing to do this if I find someone attractive and a
safe opportunity...), perhaps an unconditional and immediate choice.
Emotional inclinations, dispositions, and interests, on the other hand, do not
engage ones moral responsibility unless they result from earlier choices or are
allowed to lead one to such a choice.
The phrase sexual orientation is radically equivocal. Particularly as
used by promoters of gay rights, the phrase ambiguously assimilates two
things which that [the law] hitherto has carefully distinguished: (I) a
psychological or psychosomatic disposition inwardly orienting one towards
homosexual activity; (II) the deliberate decision so to orient ones public
behavior as to express or manifest ones active interest in and endorsement of
homosexual conduct and/or forms of life which presumptively involve such
conduct laws or proposed laws outlawing discrimination based on sexual
orientation are always interpreted by gay rights movements as going far
beyond discrimination based merely on As belief that B is sexually attracted to
persons of the same sex. Instead (it is observed), gay rights movements
interpret the phrase as extending full legal protection to public activities
intended specifically to promote, procure and facilitate homosexual conduct.
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 St. Pauls reflections on homosexual vice, in Romans 1: 19-28, make it
clear that what matters is not inclinations but the will (the debased mind) and
chosen conduct. With minds darkened, their inclinations mastering their
reason, women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same
way men...committed shameless acts with men... (Rom. 1: 21, 26-28).
Whether we are hearing Paul in faith, or using reasons own resources
to clarify our consciences and rectify our wills, we should be clear that natural
intercourse is not simply heterosexual. Rather, it is marital. That is, it is sexually
complementary (heterosexual), and in each act of spousal intercourse enables
the man and the woman, wife and husband, to experience, express and actualize
togetherphysically, emotionally, and intellectuallyboth of the two essential
marital goods: procreativeness, and a friendship which is exclusive and
permanently committed.

Notes

1. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic
Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1 October 1986, sec. 16.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church (revised edition 1997), 2333, 2393.
3. Ibid., 2333, 2393.
4. Ibid., 2333, 2393.
5. Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Certain
Questions concerning Sexual Ethics, 29 December 1975, sec. 8.
6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, (rev. ed), 2558.
7. Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics, sec. 8
8. Ibid.
9. Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, sec. 3.
10. Catechism of the Catholic Church (rev. ed.), 2358.
11. The Churchs documents on the matter treat all these words as referring to
the same thing.
12. Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, sec. 3.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. See Finnis, Aquinas 93.
16. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 6 August 1993, sec. 50
(emphasis added).
17. See Veritatis Splendor, secs. 13, 48 (the primordial moral requirement of
loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also
implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods); 50; also 78,
79.
18. E.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church 2333.

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19. Ibid. 2201, 2249.
20. Veritatis Splendor, sec. 13. St. Thomas Aquinas long ago identified this as a
single though complex primary (basic) human good: see John Finnis, Aquinas:
Moral, Political and Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 1998) 82, 143.
21. See decree of the Holy Office against the errors of the laxists, 2 March 1679,
no. 9.
22. See Finnis, Aquinas 149.
23. This line of thought is explored in depth and detail in Finnis, The Good
of Marriage and the Morality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and
Historical Observations, American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 (1997) 97 at 119-
126. See also pp. 126-134, exploring the reasons why spouses who know that,
though they have not tried to prevent conception, they cannot conceive (i.e., are
naturally infertile or have become sterile, e.g., as a result of age) can nevertheless
engage in authentically marital acts of the reproductive kind, i.e., in marital
intercourse.
24. See ibid., pp. 123-124, especially notes 108, 131-133.
24. John Finnis, Law, Morality, and Sexual Orientation, Notre Dame Law
Review 69 (1994) 1049-76 at 1053-4.

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